Aquinas Seminary is First for Scrutiny

St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ | 9/26/05 | Michele Munz

[marshmallow]

The 25 candidates studying to become priests at Aquinas Institute of Theology were described as "anxious" but not worried Monday as a Vatican team began evaluating how they are prepared intellectually, spiritually and sexually for priesthood.

"Whenever you are under the spotlight, it's difficult," the seminary's president, the Rev. Charles Bouchard, said at a press conference Monday. The students themselves were off limits to reporters, so it was Bouchard who was left to describe their mood.

The seminary on the campus of St. Louis University is in the spotlight because it's the first of 229 seminaries nationwide to be evaluated over the next nine months. The evaluations are in response to a sexual abuse scandal among clergy that began coming to light three years ago and revealed crimes and incidents that were covered up for decades.

The five-member team visiting Aquinas includes a seminary professor, campus chaplain, parish pastor and director of religious studies. It is led by Bishop Michael Burbidge of Philadelphia.

For four days, the team will meet with priesthood candidates, recently ordained graduates, faculty and staff. The team is armed with a questionnaire prepared by the Vatican.

Part of the unease stems from one of the document's dozens of questions: "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary?"

[ArrogantBustard]

Thank you.

Et cum spiritu tuo.

[BizzeeMom]

ayep.

Housecleaning time! Sweep them dust bunnies out into the light!

[Desdemona]

There's a reason it's known as the St. Louis Post-Disgrace. Joseph Pulizer must be turning in his grave.

[Desdemona]

This from the President of the seminary?

That's part of the problem with the reporting. The Aquinas Institute of Theology is not a seminary. It's actually a graduate institute. Kenrick-Glennon is our seminary.

[BlackElk]

He does.

[BlackElk]

Interesting that you choose St. Dymphna. I had a distant and very elderly cousin, Sister Dymphna, who was a nun of the order of Notre Dame de Namur. She and several of her fellow nuns were allowed to visit with our family for several days when I was a child. It was, no doubt, a blessing that she did not live to see the festivities of recent decades and particularly those within her order.

[donbosco74]

Oh, right. Seminarians are supposed to prepare sexually for the priesthood. Right.

[donbosco74]

So, you think that "it's time for the Church to quit pussyfooting around the elephant in the living room?" I wonder if B16 has been following the longest-running grand jury probe in Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love?"

Following the nation's longest-running grand jury probe into the Newchurch Sex & Embezzlement Scandal, the Philadelphia Grand Jury on September 22 issued a scathing report, charging that Newchurch cardinals/archbishops Anthony Bevilacqua and John Krol covered up hundreds of sex crimes perpetrated by at least 63 of their presbyters. "To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits -- while keeping abusive priests [meaning Newchurch presbyters] active -- the cardinals and their aides hid the priests' crimes from parishioners, police, and the general public," the report stated. The grand jury found that Newchurch leaders had engaged in a "deliberate and all-encompassing strategy to avoid revealing their knowledge of crimes."

Does the Vatican now have to retreat and regroup in its plans to issue a "revised" document on homosexuality in the seminaries this October?

This comes in the wake of comments upon the report by the grand jury of Philadelphia that it found evidence of rampant crimes against children by Newchurch presbyters and a systematic cover-up by Cardinals Krol and Bevilacqua and that Newchurch archdiocese officials howled that they were BEING PERSECUTED [!] just as in the days of rampant Know-Nothingism in the 1840s, a time of strong anti-Catholic sentiment.

There is nothing new under the sun. We have seen all this before. Nnow-Nothings are a fact of national history, but curiously, their significance in terms of how their activities affected the faith of Catholics is not a subject of much concern in history classes in our enlightened, modern Newchurch schools, nor even in the secular, atheistic public schools.

If you really really, truly truly hope that B16 is going to put it all straight, I am so very sorry for your imminent disappointment. Don't get me wrong: I wish it were true, but I have to observe the fact of history, the fact of who the erstwhile Ratzinger mentored with, and what he has been saying and doing for the past 50 years -- and it is not what you would hope it could have been.

What has he done in regards to this pederasty scandal? He, just as his predecessor JPII, had personal involvement in shielding his bishops from the criminal law and bears a moral responsibility for allowing these crimes to be committed by his bishops and presbyters without a word of strong, public censure and punishment.

B16 has been personally charged in a case now being heard in a U.S. Federal District Court in Houston court as a named accomplice concerning sex crimes by a Newchurch cleric against three boys. The pope has not claimed innocence, but has instead tried to squirm out of his responsibility by claiming "immunity," just as his subordinate, William Levada, tried to do -- Levada whom he appointed to head the Sex Crimes Congregation of Newvatican, in spite of the fact that Levada himself has been implicated in sex-crime cover-ups. In fact, the court has more of the "goods" on B16 than it did on JPII. A cover-up document signed by Ratzinger himself in 2001 has been introduced as evidence in court.

I hope you don't get too personally invested in expectations outside the realm of reasonable expectations. Of course, miracles can happen, but if B16 does pull of any reconstruction of the seminaries at this point, it has to be admitted that this is not what his history and track record would support. To think it is is like living in a fantasy dreamland. Such a surprising (and welcome!) result would rather be miraculous, not consistent with the past.

[AnAmericanMother]

I have no idea what the diocese of Philadelphia has been up to, but your ignorance of the law is fairly profound, starting with the concept of immunity and the duty to assert every defense in a prosecution not amounting to an admission of guilt.

And if you think that being indicted in Texas is proof of guilt, I wonder what you think of Ronnie Earle's indictment of Delay (or if you've even read it.)

If that's indicative of your general level of competence, I don't think I'll judge BXVI on your say-so, either.

[Salvation]

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[donbosco74]

Well, well, somehow you're getting yourself all worked up into a frizzy. Indictment? Where did I say anything about an indictment? As for immunity, perhaps you are unaware that the Pope in fact has diplomatic immunity as the head of a sovereign state, Vatican city-state. Furthermore, this is not something new, but is quite well founded on tradition. B16 doesn't have to answer to the charges in Texas, or in Philadelphia, or in a hundred other places in the world where the priests of Newchurch are currently being charged with embezzlement, murder, rape, and other such high crimes and misdimeanors. Will the Pope address these things individually? Probably not. But take a look at the good popes of the past. How many of them, when faced with such crises said nothing to reprimand and punish the Chruch's criminals individually, or worse, promoted the perpetrators to higher offices where they could continue their contemptible malfeasance?

Regarding Delay and Earle, I am not talking about politics here. If you want to discuss politics you'll have to find someone else to pester.

As for my "general level of competence," I wonder what office it is of which you presume I am in possession?

I was only sending you a friendly message to offer you a gentle warning that might help you to avoid being too disappointed when (and if) nothing comes of promised improvements. I have known more than one person who has left the Church in disgust when corruption overwhelmed them. I was hoping that your apparent optimism might not become the flash point of your abandonment of all hope. I was trying to do you a favor. I had no ill intention. But sometimes when someone is close to drowning they refuse a lifeline. I'm sorry.

[AnAmericanMother]

I profoundly disagree with your characterization of my post. I am not in a frizzy (whatever that is), but you seem to be. My concern was with your grievous inaccuracies in matters of law, which cause me to be suspicious of your general knowledge.

If as you claim the Pope was "personally charged" as a "named accomplice" in a U.S. Federal District Court, that can only be an indictment, as charges are not brought by information in federal court unless the defendant waives indictment, and it does not appear that BXVI has waived anything. Nor is one "charged" or named as an accomplice in a civil case. Those are criminal terms of art (except for quasi-criminal statutory actions such as SEC fraud cases, which don't concern us here). So either you are very confused about the facts, or you are ignorant of the law. (And if you don't think this is "political", you are also quite naive.)

In either case, you seem to me to be far too eager to trash BXVI, both by your tone and by the general tenor of your posts in the religion forum.

If you are simply sending a "friendly message" or a "gentle warning" or presuming to throw a lifeline, you are going to have to moderate your tone. Because your post sounds like you are simply seizing another opportunity to trash the Pope and the Vatican.

And you can't tell me anything about disappointment, you'd be telling Noah about the Flood. I used to be an Episcopalian.

[Maeve]

And you can't tell me anything about disappointment, you'd be telling Noah about the Flood. I used to be an Episcopalian.

Tremendous post. And the quote above is brilliant as it is heartbreaking.

[AnAmericanMother]

It really is a shame, isn't it? There were so many good people in the Episcopal church, but they (and at the time we) were ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of revisionist loons.

The Catholic church has the advantage of a strong leadership (that IMHO is how the ECUSA really got into trouble - no-one had the actual authority to take a firm stand.) I think as Catholics we have to steer a careful course -- opposition to revisionists can so easily veer into a paranoia that the entire church leadership is 'part of the conspiracy'. Then you fall out of the Barque of Peter on the opposite side, but you still fall out.

I'm not likely to fall prey to that particular idea, because I've seen what a real heretic looks like.

[donbosco74]

Normally, the Italian police are inclined to protect the Pope. They have great sympathy for him as a figurehead of paternal benevolence, even if they are not Catholic. But this is not always the case. They were not effective at keeping Napoleon out in the early 1800's, when the Pope was absconded to France by force. Nor later that century when Pius IX was forced into exile. But those were Italian popes. Now we have a German, and one might pause to wonder how loyal the non-Catholic, non-German Italian policemen might be for this foreigner?

[AnAmericanMother]

Well, the primarily German-speaking Swiss Guards might have something to say about that . . .

. . . although the Pope has been in Rome for many years, and has apparently endeared himself to the locals. In person, he is an unassuming and disarmingly modest man.

[AnAmericanMother]

BTW, that's a bit of a non-sequitur you posted.

Do you think there is some sort of threat to the Pope's life, and if so, why? Don't recall you mentioning that earlier.